Friday, September 20, 2013

"Wanderlust Adventures" - Developer's Log 16

Please keep in mind that all of the images in Developer's Logs are for Wanderlust Adventures, a new title being worked on by Yeti Trunk, and are a Work In Progress; most of them are mockups or early prototypes.

The new crafting/blacksmith menu

A little known fact about Wanderlust: Rebirth - the game was originally developed and designed without any items nor any crafting system. This may not be completely apparent, but as we look back on how we designed the crafting and items system, it was definitely a 'tacked-on' feature in comparison to how well the awards and online features were integrated into the chapter setup.

With Wanderlust Adventures, we've had more time to consider just how integrated our item system ought to be. We're quite happy with how this new item/crafting system is integrated into the game, and look forward to seeing how it's 'collection focus' will impact our users' experiences in the game.

The new item & blueprint crafting system works as follows:

As players travel throughout the continent, they will encounter many groups of enemies. Like Wanderlust: Rebirth, the leaders of these groups will be denoted with an icon drawn above their head (though in Wanderlust Adventures, leaders have colored skull icons above their heads instead of crowns).

The enemy 'leaders' have a chance to drop randomly generated gear (helmets, armors, weapons and charms).

However, if you encounter an event - and complete the event - a treasure chest will spawn nearby. Players may open it to spawn more randomized gear, materials, and tokens.

In addition to the normal loot you can get from 'Event Chests', there's also a chance that a unique blueprint will drop. However, unlike Rebirth where you have to find a blueprint every time you wish to craft an item, Wanderlust Adventures has an 'unlockable gear' menu where you may turn in the blueprint to forever unlock the gear for all of your subsequent playthroughs.

In addition to being forever available after being unlocked in the menu, each time you craft a specific item from the Blacksmith's menu you will increase the Blacksmith's affinity for creating that item, which will reward you with a discount the next time your craft it! In simple terms, up to a 40% token discount can be earned by crafting the same item multiple times.

In addition to the changes in crafting, there are a number of changes to how Gems work in Wanderlust Adventures. But, we'll have to wait until the next developer log to get into those details...